Acorda forced to stop development of drug
pharmafile | November 21, 2016 | News story | Manufacturing and Production, Research and Development | Acorda therapeutics, clinical trial, post-stroke
Acorda Therapeutics announced that they were unable to continue development of the drug, dalfampridine, due to lack of efficacy in trials. The study, named MILESTONE, did not show sufficient efficacy in improvement in post-stroke walking difficulties.
The drug had previously shown promising results in a Phase II trial but the latest results disappointed, with the results not sufficient to points towards meaningful improvement in patients. The study found that taking dalfampridine, in doses of 7.5mg, only provided a 0.5% boost in numbers over those taking the placebo. The endpoint was stipulated as those who displayed a 20% improvement on the Two Minute Walk Test at Week 12 of the study, compared with the baseline.
“We are disappointed by this outcome. The study indicated there was activity related to walking in people with PSWD, as suggested by the prior Phase 2 study, but overall this was not sufficiently clinically meaningful. I want to express our gratitude to the study participants, their care partners and clinicians, who gave their time and commitment to this research,” said Ron Cohen, president and CEO of Acorda. “This outcome underscores the risks that companies in the biopharmaceutical industry must take in order to develop innovative medicines. Over the past three years, we have successfully diversified our pipeline portfolio to account for this risk. We plan to focus R&D resources on developing our promising late-stage Parkinson’s disease therapies, CVT-301 and tozadenant, as well as advancing our earlier stage assets, CVT-427 in migraine, SYN120 in Parkinson’s disease dementia, and rHIgM22 in MS.”
At the time of writing, Acorda’s shares had fallen by 13% on the announcement of the news. Acorda was keen to stress that it had a diverse R&D portfolio and so the news of the blow would not be too strong on it’s future pipeline
Ben Hargreaves
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